Using Federalism to Nullify Roe v. Wade

John R. Houk

© July 2011

I am unapologetically a Pro-Life person. I believe children have more rights to be protected than a woman has a right over her own body. I believe life begins at conception. I believe life is the result of the Creator. I believe killing an unborn life merely as a form of birth control is reprehensible, evil and murder.

Now this is where I may disagree with many of my fellow Pro-Lifers. I believe a pregnancy that resulted from rape should be provided with the abortion pill or whatever they are calling it these days because rape is the act brutal pathological violence even if it is a onetime snap of judgment. Because the trauma of a rape on a woman is taking away her right to safety and quite probably scarring her psychological ability to deal with a healthy romance or interpersonal relations with the opposite sex I favor the female victim to make a choice of abortion, adoption or keeping the child.

I believe if it is a choice between the life of an unborn child or the life of a pregnant woman, then the choice of life should go to the woman.

I know in these two instances I might be in trouble with my fellow Pro-Lifers.

Yet I have to reassert that abortion as the mere act of birth control IS HEINOUSLY AN UNGODLY ACT OF MURDER.

Having said all this I found an interesting tidbit of information from the Tenth Amendment Center (TAC) about the law and abortion. TAC evidently has been tracking proposed legislation in the great State of Ohio that might “nullify” Roe v. Wade which opened wide the gates of unborn infanticide in America. Those gates were swung open by the United States Supreme Court by deciding 7 to 2 to legalize abortion as a right to privacy issue which can loosely be interpreted that a woman’s decisions over her body weighs more than the unborn human life to have the right to live.

The TAC reports that the Lower House of the Ohio State General Assembly has passed legislation that would define human life to begin with a viable heart beat. If the General Assembly Senate follows suit and the Ohio Governor signs such a Bill into law there certain to be an Appellate and probable Supreme Court weigh-in on such a law.

According to the TAC report it seems that many Pro-Lifers believe such an Ohio law will hand more nails in the coffin of the Right to Life when the Federal Court system makes a decision which might use Roe v. Wade as part of judicial history to overturn such a law on the State level.

I on the other hand believe that if an anti-abortion law comes into existence on the State level it will be the opportunity to reaffirm the principle of Federalism that our great nation was founded upon. We are talking States’ Rights and the Federal Court to uphold the principle of the Tenth Amendment:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Allowing sovereign States in the Union of the United States of America to decide the legality or illegality of abortion would fit closer to the Tenth Amendment and the right of the States to make law that is not specifically written in the U.S. Constitution. Keep in mind U.S. Congressional Bills are not the same as the U.S. Constitution.

The Federalist path to Pro-Life may not be the perfect picture of God creating life at conception; however it would be a great beginning to reverse Roe v. Wade.

JRH 7/15/11